Influence of historical landscape on aquatic plant diversity

The historical composition of landscapes is recognized as an important factor for explaining plant diversity, because species assemblages are not only patterned by current ecological conditions, but also represent legacies of the past. Contrary to terrestrial ecosystems, the influence of history has rarely been considered for aquatic communities. Here, we examined the effect of past land use on aquatic plant communities of freshwater shallow lakes. We first aimed to identify the relevant scale for studying landscape effects on macrophyte communities and then to test the relative influence of environmental variables and past and recent land use on aquatic plant assemblages.